Sunday, January 19, 2003

As Bill Clinton knew so well, in order to make a complicated point comprehensible to average Americans who have no first hand experience with abstract issues involving big money and policy choices --- you personalize it, you draw contrasts and you frame the issue in terms of human values.

These are real human beings who have been determined to have suffered a life changing loss due to negligent or conscious actions on the part of corporations. It is not about the "greedy trial lawyers." It is about them.

It is beyond dispute that pain and suffering is a real, actual, legitimate loss. The hard question is how much money is required to compensate for a given amount of pain and suffering. There is no scale that actually balances pain on one side of the scale and money on the other side. The Bush administration suggests that a lifetime of pain and suffering result in compensation of a maximum of $250,000.

Perhaps we can put that amount into perspective by comparing it with other values our within society.

In 1999 Ken Lay dispatched an empty Enron Jet to France to fetch his daughter Robin home from Nice. The cost of that flight was was $125,000 or one half of what the Bush administration considers to be the value of a lifetime of pain and suffering.

The Bush administration’s latest tax cut proposal would have reduced Dick Cheney’s taxes by $220,000 in the last year he worked at Halliburton. That tax relief is approximately 90% of what the Bush administration believes to be the damages for a lifetime of pain and suffering.

Invested in 10-year Treasury Notes currently yielding 4.02%, $250,000 could provide a yearly income of $10,050. A full time minimum wage earner makes approximately $11,850 per year.

Last year Braves pitcher Gregg Maddox earned more than $13,000,000 and pitched almost 200 innings. Mr. Maddox earned more than what Mr. Bush feels is adequate compensation for a lifetime in a wheelchair for every four innings he pitched.